Crisis of meaning, part 2: The lie at the end of the MCU multiverse

He Who Remains is not great: How the TVA poisons everything

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 SDG Original source: All Things SDG

Questions of meaning and nihilism in the MCU multiverse and the Spider-Verse have become inseparable from the multiverse-policing agencies in both sagas. The Spider-Verse has the Spider-Society, while the MCU has the Time Variance Authority or TVA, first seen in Loki but coming to the big screen in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine movie. Because we currently have considerably more closure regarding the nature and workings of the TVA than the Spider-Society, let’s consider the TVA and the MCU first.

The MCU began in 2008 with Iron Man; one could say that it all began with a life-changing moment of moral clarity in the life of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. After leading an aimless playboy life from his youth, Tony’s life takes a dramatic turn as a result of a near-fatal explosion in Afghanistan and three months of captivity by international terrorists. “I had my eyes opened,” Tony tries to explain in his first press conference. “I’m not crazy,” he later tells Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts. “I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it’s right.” Later he insists, “There is nothing except this.… There’s the next mission, and nothing else.”

“There is nothing except this” reflects Tony’s withering new perspective on his life up to this point, which now appears meaningless to him. One way of approaching the idea of a meaningful life is that human beings have a deep-seated need for connection to something that is bigger than ourselves. They may pursue this sense of connection in different arenas—art, religion, philosophy, science, family, love, sex, drugs, service to others, philanthropy—and they may feel the need in different degrees at different times; some go long periods of time without feeling it at all (Tony’s life has always been entirely self-centered, and it never bothered him before). For those whose eyes are opened to this need, though, everything else may be secondary. And those who find that sense of connection often feel that they have found their purpose in life—that they are in some way where they are meant to be, doing what they are called to do. Tony’s belief that he “has to” follow this singular course suggests this sense of purpose or calling.

There are no final proofs in questions of meaning. There are only beliefs; interpretive judgments; perceptions or intuitions that we do or don’t trust. The experience of meaning in synchronicity rests on an interpretation of dramatic convergences in our lives as signposts of a higher reality: a grand design ordered by some inscrutable cosmic mystery, something far larger than ourselves.

Signposts of (perceived) meaning

Tony’s moment of moral clarity comes via a specific type of experience or perception of meaning: a phenomenon that Carl Jung called “synchronicity.” Synchronicity involves a convergence of events that impresses us as meaningfully related, although there is no ostensible causal connection.

Here’s an illustration of synchronicity from my own life. A number of years ago, early on a Friday morning, I awoke from a dream about an old friend from my college days with a strong impression that I should pray for him that day and specifically offer my Friday penance for him. The following Sunday I learned that, on the day I was praying for him, my friend was in a catastrophic accident—sideswiped by a large truck that totaled his car. To his own amazement, he walked away unharmed.
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